Instead, I want to write about how getting old means you process events differently. At least I process them differently than I would have a decade or more ago.
Yesterday I was standing in line at the ATM outside a branch of our bank that is in a small strip mall near my home. One man was taking a rather long time at the machine and there was another in front of me waiting. I stood a polite three feet behind. A man in his 60s got out of his car from the parking lot and walked between us and then turned to the man at the machine and said, "That ATM is not working! It would not give me my money and then I got a text on my phone that said the money had been withdrawn. I am going inside and see what is going on."
I followed the man inside the Bank and waited my turn. The lady at the counter said that he did not need to worry about his phone message because the computers crossed paths. She checked his account, the money had not been withdrawn and then offered to get cash for him from his account. She said the ATM machine had been broken "a while." Both the man and I said they should put out a sign so that people do not wait in the hot sun. She responded that they are not allowed to put signs at the machine(!). (And the machine is broken, so it is unable to put its own sign!)
Now before you reveal your age, please note that my daughter told me she has not been to a bank in ages. She does all her banking on her phone! Cash never touches her hands again. All of the customers in this instance were gray-headed.
The recent international failure of Cloudstrike (which is a computer server business) that brought much of the airline industry to its knees for two or more days as well as numerous businesses, makes me dismayed by it all. This was not a nefarious hacking job, just them uploading a new version of their programming!
My patience is thinning. Clearly, I do not have a dog...cheerio.
